Watches & Grapes

After a beautiful hike up Green Mtn this morning, so that Paul could fix a weather station, we ran over to the Post Office - I got a package from my folks and it had a hysterical little gift for Paul and I. It was a great set of matching fake Movado watches my Dad found at a flea market. Mine was plain Paul's looked like this:

Then we visited the Jaycee's Collectible Show. It was small - but very interesting. I love rooting through someone else's old junk. I'm not much of a collector of fancy items - I don't go for flowery china, or dolls, or other normal dust collectors... I go for odd items. Let me give you an example: I have a parking meter lamp. And its very cool. I love really old light bulbs - the kind that are hand blown... those are WAY cool. I have a few antique fans - they all work and are the kind that you could probably cut your fingers off or shred something you didn't like in the fan blades because they're totally exposed! Big fan of really old leather history or geography books, especially the ones with marbled pages - but I really go for the illustrations - with those incredible engravings on that heavy cotton paper. And of course I'm always on the look out for different silver jewelry and letterpress type. One day I'll own my own press.

So anyway, we perused for a few hours, and spoke with a few of the dealers. I found a pretty beat up carbide light - but it was beyond fixing, and they wanted $24 for it so I didn't get it. I did find an old sewing book with lots of illustrations, a few gifts for people that I will tuck away for future birthdays, and then we found this cool vintage table cloth - a souvenir from Alaska. The same gal had these grape hot pads too; they're made out of bottle caps believe it or not. I think this is an item that falls into the category of "its so tacky its cute." So its now adorning our little kitchen table along with cool "new" Alaska table cloth.